Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "World War Z" again last night.  We both find it gripping.  The pace is fast enough that niggling details escape your notice, and the plot has clean points to make that build to the solution to the problem.  It all has the illusion of realism and is over before you can worry over zombie physiology or likelihood.  The center of the story is Brad Pitt as a UN experienced navigator in the world's hot spots.  His lived in face, his gravitas even as he makes himself ordinary, like all great movie stars enforces our trust of his character.  There are twists and turns that surprise us, and a perfect balance between zombie chaos and intimate scenes.  This is a super well edited film, and the music enhances our dread and emotional involvement.  Each time I see nice details I missed the last time around.  One of the most powerful lines is about how we bury our heads in the sand until forced to look, and it has an obvious echo in climate change and the destruction of our environment.  This film is about something important without naming it:  it aims viserally.  Why not?  All the Al Gores in the world haven't awakened us.  Nor the hurricanes and storms.  Let's cut to the chase:  what if we ALL die?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "Invisible Woman" last night, Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut.  The story is about Charles Dickens and Ellen Tiernan, who were lovers and for whom Dickens separated from his wife.  It's a fascinating story of what both risked, but of course the risk was far greater for Tiernan.  It exposes the codes of the time, the sexism, the entrapment of propriety.  Fiennes is perfect as Dickens.  Felicity Jones is Ellen, and I thought her fine, though my husband felt her acting was weak.  Kirsten Scott-Thomas is Ellen's mother, and the woman who plays Dickens' wife is superb.  Fiennes manages to convey the emotions and constrictions of that era succinctly, and also the all consuming passion of a writer.  The film made me want to read the book upon which it is based, and also a big biography of Dickens.  The fear of poverty is shown as a motivator of Dickens' actions and also his desire to escape the domesticity which he loved and was strangled by.  His many children, adored but ignored, and his 19th century lack of responsibility for their existence, are disturbing and familiar.

What one is left with is the plight of a woman who falls in love with an unavailable man, and how hers is the back that must bend to the crucible of passion, while he, ultimately, is free of constraint.  It's the tragedy of a woman's lot, though in this case she survived and went on to have her own family and memories.  And the books.  Which in this film are like the treasures of Aladdin.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night I watched part of one of my husband's favorite films:  "Courage Under Fire".  Men like combat films, but he really loves Denzel Washington's performance in particular.  Washington is great as a man who has made a mistake for which he cannot forgive himself.  Regina Taylor is his match, as his wife who is trying to be patient while he is abandoning her and the kids.  Matt Damon and Lou Diamond Phillips are stand outs as two soldiers on the mission in Iraq that kills their officer, played by Meg Ryan.  She is more than good here, and it makes you wonder where she has gone and what happened to her.  At her age, usually actresses switch to TV, but I don't hear anything of her.  Scott Glenn is his usual complex self as a journalist, and everyone in the movie shines.

The topic is still of the moment:  women in combat and their hard fight for authority and respect.  And we can easily see the second Iraq war and Afganistan in the battle scenes.  We know nothing has changed.

But the most interesting thing about the movie is the Rashamon type narrative.  We see the incident where Captain Walden (Ryan) is killed from different perspectives.  Everyone has a different story, and sees what he can bear seeing or what is self-serving.  This choice makes the film transcend the details and forces us to look at interpretation and what we can believe of what we hear from others.  Washington's character senses something untold, and that is because in his life he is struggling with unsaid truths begging to be spoken.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I went by myself last Sunday to see a matinee of "Transcendence", with Johnny Depp.  I can't honestly say I recommend it, though visually it is beautiful, and it has interesting ideas to think about.  Depp plays the film straight, or as straight as he can.  His "look" is too studied, and really no Berkeley science professor looks like he thinks they do.  I got a kick out of his perfect Berkeley house and scenes around campus.  One thing I am liking to see:  like Tom Cruise, Depp is no longer hiding how tiny he is and everyone towers over him.  Unfortunately, that includes Rebecca Hall playing his wife.  She looks so big boned and almost hulky beside him, and although, yes, real life couples can be physical opposites, it just doesn't work and and there is no chemistry between them.  And this is supposed to be, in essence, a love story.

Saving the day is Paul Bettany, much more gorgeous than Depp, tall and sexy, and you keep hoping he will end up with Hall.  Not a good complication.  I always love seeing Bettany, and here he and Hall get to do all the emoting.  There's weeping, gnashing of teeth, and more weeping.  It's a very gushy film.

The science makes no sense, despite countless drips of water and particles flying up in the air.  But I don't mind that so much.  Morgan Freeman plays himself or a variation thereof, but as usual, his presence lends a weird kind of credibility.

I really want Depp to win an Oscar, and it looks like he's figured out he needs some "normal" roles to get it.  He should have gotten it for "Neverland", but oh, well.  He needs to have roles that show his ordinary humanity, and this film is a step in that direction.  But gorgeous as he is, he needs to get over his own face and sink more into his character.  I love his Tim Burton films, but they have somehow hurt his credibility.  Some moviegoers find him vain and flippant.  The Oscar is a popularity contest, and it's hard to call Depp likeable, though it's easy to call him a genius.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My favorite Alfred Hitchcock film is "Notorious", but it used to be "Rebecca", and the first VHS I ever was given was that film.  I was thrilled.  As a kid I adored Laurence Olivier films on TV, and I loved reading Daphne Du Maurier.  I loved the romance, melodrama and suspense back then, but now, when I watch "Rebecca" I see a very dark film, in which a naive girl with no experience is trapped by superficial charm and glamour to yoke her life to a murderer's.  Because Max is a murderer in the book, and it's implied in the film, despite Rebecca tripping on the rope.  There is tremendous psychological depth to each of the characters.  But in a nutshell, they are all undone by romantic notions.  Mrs. Danvers is foolish about Rebecca, as is the estate manager.  Max is stupid to think he should take what he wants and that he won't destroy it.  George Sanders as the cousin is really the only person who sees clearly the complications of the situation and understands exactly what Rebecca was.  Because he's like her:  he takes what he wants with his eyes wide open. 

Though Olivier is great, it's Joan Fontaine's film, and she should have won the Oscar for this and not "Suspicion".  Her reactions are transparent and subtly layered.  She's like Euyridice, pulled into hell by Orpheus.  The great symbol is the one tree her father painted over and over again before he died.  He wanted the security and comfort of the familiar and the heroine is his daughter in spirit.  She's too fluttery and frightened to fight for herself, she's instead constantly giving herself away because she supposed it's the right thing to do.  There is a reason she has no name.  She is not a person.  She wants to please in the most self destructive way.  She's not "good", she's terrified to be unmoored to her old life and her father, and she finds a father who has less innocent obsessions.  Unconsciously, he has desired the opposite of Rebecca, but that means he wants a child, not a woman, and that need is base and selfish.  In the book they are huddled away in obscurity and never have children.  Thank god for that.  This story is a horror tale.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"High Noon" has been discussed ad infinitem, but it is a great western, and Gary Cooper deserved his Oscar for it.  His face tells it all.  The rest of the cast is brilliant as well.  I am not a fan of Grace Kelly's acting, she was a model, not an actress, and her voice, like Winona Ryder's, was thin, scratchy and carried no power.  She was best when she was looked at:  "Rear Window", "To Catch a Thief" and roles with great clothes.  It was a travesty she won the Oscar for "The Country Girl".  Basically, they gave it to her because she didn't wear makeup, as they gave one to Nicole Kidman for marring her model face with a false nose.  But her casting works here, because she is shallow and pretty, without any life knowledge or wisdom.  Supposedly in real life she slept around, but she makes a perfect virgin.  She is a girl. 

The woman in this movie is Katy Jurado, perhaps the most beautiful woman ever on film.  And she could act.  The flaw of Cooper's character is that he wants a church going girl, when he could have Jurado, sensual, smart, wise and with a depth of passion Kelly would never know how to muster.  She's the other reason to see the movie besides Coop.  Maybe if she'd been born later they'd have dared put her in films, like Salma Hayek and Eva Mendes, but even those two get short shift, given their beauty and talent.  Ingrid Bergman could use that lusciousness to advantage in her career, but Jurado was Mexican, and the film industry wasn't ready for her.

Lloyd Bridges is terrific as Jurado's lover and a cowardly deputy not up to Coop's courage.  And the character actors are all icons in westerns.

The movie is helped greatly by it's conciseness, it almost happens in real time, and a great song that sets the tone.  Is there a better western?  I kind of doubt it.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Cary Grant is my all time favorite film actor and one of his most pleasing roles is in "The Batchelor and the Bobby Soxer", from 1947.  It won the Oscar for best original screenplay by Sidney Sheldon.  Grant plays an artist, famous, who speaks to a high school audience containing Shirley Temple, who develops a crush on him.  Temple is funny in this, and the perfect age and attitude.  Her aunt, Myrna Loy, is a judge, and low and behold Grant comes before her as a witness in a night club altercation.  When later she discovers he's the object of her niece's misplaced affection, against her instincts she is persuaded to let the obsession play out by her uncle (Ray Collins in fine form).  Loy has a kind of fiance, Rudy Vallee at his most obnoxious, and her niece has a boyfriend with a jalopy who is crushed to be displaced.

The lines are delivered with just the right amount of pizazz, and the chemistry between Loy and Grant is, as always, powerful.  Grant's performance is delightful.  He toes the line by being amused but not attracted to Temple, and ridiculous, but in the most adorable way.  Who could resist him?  Not Loy, who slowly and subtly melts around him, and becomes a passionate woman, trading her robes and principles for a warmly beating heart and a knockout evening gown.

This film was made in an era when "Lolita" couldn't have been, because there was still a belief in growing up and that maturity had its merits.  The youth culture had not begun to dominate our fantasies, and appropriate behavior was considered an asset.  Grant wanted a woman, not a girl, and how wonderful it is to look back and see that world again.  Now the dream of middle aged men is underage girls, and Loy would be on a matchmaking site hoping against hope for the one man in a million who wanted a beautiful, mature woman with a strong career.  Lots of luck, lady.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night my husband and I watched "Jack Reacher", with Tom Cruise.  I've never read the books, but I've heard about the furor over Cruise being so physically miscast.  I respect that, especially as I have trouble with the "Longmore" TV series because Henry is physically wrong, as is the deputy.  So it can get in your way.  But Cruise, though little, is believable as the tough guy, his action scenes seem real and his car racing even more so.  Bigger is not necessarily better, and I like the way Cruise doesn't hide his height any more.  He doesn't need to, as he is leaner, harder looking and with a focus that pops on the screen.  Yoda wasn't tall and it didn't hurt him any.

The whole movie is lean and spare, with an engaging plot that we want to puzzle out along with Reacher.  Rosamund Pike is good as the assistant DA and Richard Jenkins is great as her dad.  David Okelolo is also excellent and Werner Herzog as the bad guy and Robert Duvall as the crusty gun range expert steal the show.  Everyone is distinctive and interesting, with not much dialogue but a lot of expression. 

Reacher is an outlaw, but one who cleans up messes the law gets entangled in, and makes sure the bad guys lose.  It's gratifying, if bloody.  His actions at the end of the film seem inevitable and necessary.  That's how good Tom Cruise is.  He may be a nut in real life, but he's a commanding presence onscreen.  He's a star, and we trust him.  We're pulling for him all the way.  You know if you go see a Cruise movie the quality will be high and you will like the ride.  That's worth a lot.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We've seen "Conspiracy Theory" quite a few times over the years.  It's a very funny movie, and Mel Gibson is at his best.  He and Julia Roberts make a good team, and Patrick Stewart as the bad guy is terrific.  I have a new consciousness about the state of mind of Gibson that I didn't possess when this came out in 1997.  So it's bittersweet to watch him clown around.  He's so good at it.  And maybe because he turned out to be "off" himself.  He's only 41 in this film, but you see the worry lines on his forehead, and his skin is aging fast, probably because of his manic energy and smoking and drinking.  But he still has those eyes and that lost boy persona that made him honey to girl bees.  Roberts is 29 in this film, so he seems a bit stale for her, but given the story line of her murdered father it fits that she would be attracted to a protector. 

There are so many funny lines just tossed hither and yon  that you can't catch them all, and your own laughing will cause you to have trouble hearing them, but what a hilarious script!  And the whole time you're thinking:  wait a minute, this could be true, as you listen.  Gibson is the master of this chatter.  And so many funny scenes, with the best being him tied to a wheelchair barreling down a staircase causing mayhem all the way to the bottom. 

We lost a star when Gibson self-destructed.  His mind was wired wrong, probably from his father, and yet for many years his talent shown bright despite his ideas, both as an actor and as a director.  He's brilliant, but dangerous.  Beautiful, but damaged.  In the end, I felt sadness for the turn in his life, but that was after he made me laugh so hard I almost burst a blood vessel.  Oh, Mel, we hardly knew you.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"The Boys from Brazil" is a fun thriller.  From a book by Ira Levin, who also wrote "Rosemary's Baby", it has an even more plausible premise today:  Joseph Mengele, hiding in Paraguay, has cloned around a hundred Hitlers, sent the babies off to various countries to be raised in circumstances as Hitler was, and then later unleased upon the world.  Gregory Peck plays Mengele, James Mason is one of the Nazis in the plot, Laurence Olivier is the Nazi hunter no one supports, Lili Palmer is his sister, and Steve Gutenberg is a journalist hot on the trail. 

It's delightful to see the three old lions chewing up the scenery, and the kid who plays young Hitler is scary, Jeremy Black.  The pace is perfect, the tension is bundled between scenes with humor, and the film leaves you with a lot to think about:  nature versus nurture?  how much of our destiny is in our hands?  what if Hitler had lived with a different set of circumstances.

The movie is fun, and even zany, while being scary and bizarre.  There is a scene with Rottweilers that may make you stick to cats.  It's worth a look.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "Terminator:Salvation" last night.  It was not a hit in theaters, and rightly so, as it is an attempt at a pre-sequel for greedy reasons only.  And yet, and yet...Last night, and no, I had nothing to drink, it struck me as interesting. The casting is good:  Christian Bale is the perfect choice for John Conner, and Sam Worthington as Marcus does have a look of Arnold.  Also, it is fun to see the machines from a different angle, and the film makes you curious about what has happened to Marcus.  And what has been done to him is left in suspense and not fully revealed until the end. 

The message is very Buddhist:  we are not our minds, but our heart/mind, and Marcus has retained his human heart, even though the bad guys have screwed around with the rest.  We can choose.  No matter how we are programed by culture or experience, we can choose.  Compassion is our salvation.  That has a nice ring to it for me.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night I saw a movie I love that my husband dislikes, "Hereafter" directed by Clint Eastwood.  It is a strange film, and attempts to explore near death experiences.  There are three stories presented:  the first is Matt Damon living in San Francisco, a psychic who is tortured by his gift, the second is Cecile de France, a famous French TV personality who is caught in the tsunami in Indonesia, and the third story is of twin boys in London with a druggie mother more or less fending for themselves.  The first images of the film are powerful and strangely beautiful yet profoundly disturbing:  the ordinary moments before the tsunami and the rush of the water and the turbulence sweeping up de France's character as she is pulled under and buffeted around.  But Damon's character is being pulled under by despondency and lonliness, and the twin boys by their struggle to keep social services from taking them away from their mother, though she is patently unfit.  They have become "other" through their experiences.  Miraculously, they find each other.  The stories and amazing acting of these characters make us feel with them almost immediately, and there are twists and turns that surprise us and show some wit and test the strengths of these main people.

I find this film lovely and truthful, acknowledging the experiences we cannot rationalize, the affinities we cannot understand.  Eastwood was courageous in tackling this subject, and has done it with compassion, tenderness and good taste.  His guitar music is a lovely woven thread through the film, underlining the motif of fragility and strength.  There is a wisdom in this movie that is rare.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

A few nights ago we watched "Wait Until Dark" a sixties film with Audrey Hepburn.  She plays a recently blinded woman, married to Ephram Zimbalist Jr, a photographyer.  He is the unwitting recipient of a doll filled with heroin and the woman who asked him to hold it for her is murdered and her killers are after the doll. Richard Crenna, looking very young, is one of the two excops drawn into the scheme and Alan Arkin plays the psychopath who hires them.  They send the husband away on a wild goose chase in order to terrorize the wife, Hepburn, into giving them the doll, but it has disappeared and they don't believe her.  This was a play, but the claustrophobia is perfect in the basement flat, and most of the plot twists are clever and plausible.  Hepburn is excellent.  What I couldn't quite get over is her thinness; she is wearing clothes that have her looking skeleton like.  In other films this is better hidden.  I couldn't help but think of her and her mother as refugees in World War II, starving and desperate.  Sometimes Angelina Jolie looks emaciated as well, and to me at least, it is disturbing and hurts the story.

I think this film wears well, and the suspense is gripping and the only real flaw is Zimbalist's character, who is too paternal with his wife, and my last thought of the movie is she should definitely divorce him and find a more sensitive man. 

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We saw "Noah" yesterday, after the recommendation of our son.  The film left us with lots to talk about, and caused my husband to read about various flood stories in history and even read the Bible.  As our son said, it's not perfectly done, but the ideas are interesting, and the acting excellent.  I thought the "watchers" were neat, though they resembled the rock guy in "Neverending Story", and the special effects were good.  The drama of a man who thinks he knows the will of God is, well, biblical and timeless.  The rifts within the family are engaging and realistic.  That Noah sees the inevitability of man destroying nature and each other again and still chooses hope is touching, and something each of us undergoes in our modern world.  The king's vision of man as conqueror and user of the world for his needs and pleasure is equally prevalent in our time.  They run Wall Street and most of everything else.

Russell Crowe is perfect for the role and Jennifer Connelly is fine as his wife for a second time (remember "Beautiful Mind")?  Emma Watson and the other kids are good, and Aronofsky makes you care about all of them.  I love some of the details surrounding the animals, and the scale of the Ark is perfect.  The watery effects are great.

I wish there had been more of the landing and we had seen the animals disembark.  There is something dimmished about the last part of the movie which makes it anticlimatic.

But the questions raised are as big as it gets and transcend cultures and times.  Are we stewards of the earth or lords?  Were we meant to eat our fellow creatures?  And what does it do to us if we choose to do so?  Is our nature more dark than light, or have we choice to turn from the dark to the light?  Will man bring about his own destruction yet again?  Something to ponder.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My hand is still in a cast, but in a couple of weeks I should be able to write in this blog regularly again.  Last night we watched Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", 1939, and it's patriotic and clear eyed at the same time.  Jimmy Stewart is a bit hysterical throughout, but then he does anxiety so well.  Jean Arthur is Saunders, his secretary when he comes to D.C. as a newly minted Senator, his perfect foil, so calm and pragmatic and depressed she's bound to fall for him and does.  Claude Rains is terrific as the senator Smith worships, and Harry Carey wonderful as the President of the senate.  Thomas Mitchell plays a reporter in love with Arthur and everyone does their bit to make the film vivid.

Seeing boy pages is fascinating.  Now they are twenty somethings the senators sleep with.  All the boy scout stuff is baloney, but fun, and the year this film was made shows in the reminders of what America stands for, versus the looming Europe of Hitler.  It's a great history lesson, vastly romanticized.  It sends my heart soaring, and I'm glad I will be visiting D.C. next month, as I've loved the city since childhood.  If you're in the mood, all the speechifying is inspiring, and you almost believe all over again that good can triumph over greed and corruption.  Almost.  Except for the Supreme Court, making money the only coin of the realm.  

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched an oldie but goodie a few nights ago:  "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".  A goofy combo of old Lost in Space TV shows, Sci Fi movies of the fifties, and druggie seventies take on life, it catches just the right tone for delightful viewing.  It stars Martin Feldman as a man whose house is destroyed when aliens claim the earth, and Mos Def as the alien who saves him.  They hitchhike a ride on a space ship with amusingly boring aliens who read terrible poetry aloud.  Then they end up on a ship with Sam Rockwell, the King of the Galaxy and human Zooey Deshanel, queen of the space cadets, who is Feldman's crush.  Alan Rickman voices a depressed robot, and practically steals the show from Rockwell, who is terrific. 

I laugh out loud every time I see this movie, and it's a great way to unwind after hard day.  Spaciness has never been so easy to watch and participate in.  To me, this is better than the book and more relevant in any decade.  I know, heretical.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I fractured my wrist in a fall, hence the gap, and also probably the brevity of comments until ith heals.  Last week we watched Ron Howard's "Rush", which my friend and I had seen in the theater and loved.  I don't even like cars, or racing yet I was riveted.  My friend suggested seeing it because she has a crush on Chris Hemsworth, and I readily agreed because he is gorgeous.  To my surprise, the story, true, is fascinating, the race scenes gripping and the acting excellent.  I was continually surprised with the twists in plot, and the contrast between the two rivals was thought provoking. 
Hemsworth as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl as Niki Lauda are opposites, and yet both complex, with flaws and strengths that Howard reveals cleverly.  Bruhl really stands out, as does the woman who plays his wife, Alexandra Maria Lara.  Olivia Wilde is Hunt's wife, but is barely on the screen and not really developed.  It's Lauda's movie, because though both men had dramatic lives, it's Lauda who had to overcome the most.  I'll spare details, as you will want to come to the story fresh, as we did.  My husband loved the film as much, so it's a good couples' film and you'll have a lot to talk about after.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Yesterday my movie buddy and I went to see "The Grand Budapest Hotel", Wes Anderson's new film.  It's quite funny and delightful, with an amazing cast, but Ralph Fiennes is practically the whole show.  His "lobby boy", an actor in his first film, is one note but perfect, with big liquid black eyes and a drawn on moustache, and the stare of an ideal straight man.  As usual, the set design is the real star, and the colorization; you can just be hypnotized by the visuals if the sound were to be cut off.  But this story is more solid, like "Fantastic Mr. Fox", with action and drama, all over the top.  Set supposedly in 1932, before the second World War that changed the old Europe forever and left many rich or titled people dead or in exile, it makes fun of luxury hotels while loving every inch of them.  There was a concept of service that is long gone now.  Maybe it only ever existed in the movies of the 1930s. 

Monsieur Gustave is a lost soul who has made his way up the ladder to Concierge.  He rules his palace with exactitude and love.  He has a thing for old ladies, and when one of them dies (Tilda Swinton) he inherits a painting and her estate, but is hounded by her relatives (led by Adrien Brody with the most electrifying hairstyle).  He and his lobby boy try to escape, are put in prison, and while all this action is going on, we glimpse Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Wilem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray and Anderson's irregulars.  It's great fun, except for a cat being thrown out the window.  "Moonrise Kingdom" had a dog being killed.  I don't understand why Anderson finds that humorous, and it makes me suspect psychopathic tendencies he is unaware of but seem bizarre and misplaced.

The story is told as a story within a story, so we see the lobby boy, now old (F. Murray Abraham), being interviewed by a journalist (Jude Law).  This 1950s setting makes the post communist world seem in stark contrast to the vanished world, and the barren, utilitarian design seem bleak and tragic.

I'm so happy to see Ralph Fiennes get a great comic role and run around the bases with it.  The film makes us reflect on how we hug our myths of "the old days" and why.  Underneath all the fun is the orphan nature of the lobby boys, the violence they have fled, and the horror of the world outside the door of the hotel.  We construct our stories to escape, and Anderson gives us the guilt free joy of playing along with us.  His dollhouse world is as rich as his imagination and ours.  It's like a balloon ride, where everything below is tiny and manageable, unless you think about it too hard.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My husband finds it too depressing, so I watched "Traffic" by myself last night.  It is a downer, but beautifully crafted and acted, with a Shakespearean tragedy tone.  The colorization alone is gorgeous, and the movie has something to say.  No answers, but something powerful to say about the way we drag Mexico down and they drag us down, over drugs.  Each story is poignant and feels truthful.  The cast is phenomenal:  Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Dennis Quaid, Albert Finney, and many more fine actors getting their frisson going. Benicio del Toro won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a Mexican cop struggling to stop the carnage.

Does it help to lay out the true state of the drug war?  Maybe not, but Director Steven Soderbergh tried, and his film is an elegy to those who died or are crushed in this quagmire. Clearly, nothing has changed since 2000, when the film came out.  Kids still find it easier to get drugs than alcohol, no job can compete with the bucks to be made by drug dealing, the various administrations in Washington, D.C. pay lip service and have a show of force, but cannot control the flow of drugs.  Mexico is being crushed under the cartels' violence, and well meaning, ordinary families are losing their members to death and destruction. 

I personally adore Don Cheadle, and he is great in this film, hoping against hope he can make a difference, with all the odds stacked against him as a DEA agent.  Douglas is similarly distinguished as a judge who accepts the position of drug Czar and finds the war in his own home.  Zeta-Jones is fiery and truthful as a Lady Macbeth determined to keep her extravagant lifestyle no matter what she has to do.  Erica Christensen is amazing as a teenager lost in drugs.  And yes, Del Toro deserved the Oscar.  I haven't seen him since, but the quality of his work in this film is superior. 

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I liked the old days when you could browse in a store and find DVDs you'd never heard of and discover treasures.  Nowaways, you must order, so no discoveries are made.  A few years ago I came across a BBC production of Elizabeth Gaskell's "North and South" (2004).  Set in the turmoil of the industrial revolution, with the culture in England changing quickly, we see a young girl, Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe), brought up in rural southern England, forced to move to the industrial north when her father uproots them to move to Milton.  Margaret's immediate reaction is revulsion at the lack of culture, the sooty environment, the condition of the mills.  Her father takes on a student of classics, John Thornton (Richard Armitage), the owner of Marlborough Mils.  Gradually, Margaret's sympathies are engaged by the mill workers, their struggles and their kindnesses. 

Margaret finds herself increasingly attracted to Thornton, despite his strange and vulgar family, and he is drawn to her intelligence and refinement.  Their chemistry is powerful, and the plot and subplots are engaging and educational.  Sinead Cusack as Thornton's mother is excellent, as is Tim Pigot-Smith as the worker torn by who to trust and his desperation to support and save his family, including his young daughter whom Margaret befriends.  When Margaret comes into money, will she abandon her new friends and head for London or be pulled to a new and different life in a place she once scorned?

The series, at 233 minutes is well worth watching, and the class issues are fresh and riveting.  

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "The Last Samurai" last night and it is definitely a well done movie with excellent acting, cinematography and story.  For the first time, I noticed that it is ultra romantic, like "Last of the Mohicans' and "Dances with Wolves".  Each has a caucasian central character who embraces the tribal culture of a people undergoing swift and huge transformation.  Algren falls in love with Japanese culture:  the samarai code, the Buddhist philosophy, the simplicity of the life in the mountain village.  In the end, he leaves his own heritage to become an honorary Japanese.  In "Mohicans", Nathaniel is already half Mohican, having been raised by Chingnachcok, and he flows easily from one culture to another, although he has already chosen to be Indian.  Costner's character in "Dances" like Algren, is war weary, suffering post traumatic stress disorder, and ripe for a change of values and a dose of spirituality. 

Some of the scenes in "Last" have the look of Hokusai or Hiroshige prints.  There is a sense of time travel back in time, even if that era is fast slipping away.  Costner is pulled backward in time as well.  It is patently true that a person can be born into one culture but feel out of joint and "fit" more successfully into another.  All three of these heroes find their hearts and homes in tribal structures.  They are not really wild west individualists, they are beings who long for interconnectedness.  Ken Wantanabe's samarai warrior immediately sees his connection to Algren, and opens himself to learning about another culture.  After initial hostility, Algren responds.  This curiosity is the key to the attractiveness, liveliness and admiration we feels for these characters.  Wantanabe is fantastic in this role, for which he was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar.  The battle scenes are wonderful, and as in "Dances" so sad.  These warriors have seen too much.  They each make a retreat to heal themselves.  Algren's is at the village as he is healing from wounds.  Costner's is at the Sioux village and by himself on the plains.  Nathaniel retreats at the end, mourning his lost brother and what he has seen.  He and Cora head south for Kentucky, away from the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars.  Algren will disappear back into the village to live out his life.

There is nothing wrong with a romantic view of tribal people as long as you are aware that the picture you are getting is filtered through a white man's lens and not authentic.  After all, there were many older movies that romanticized pioneering whites as they killed the savages.  Such a picture may be beautiful, and lovely to look at, but it does not represent the way it was.  This is not history, folks, it is romance.  As such, it is a fine romance.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

The 1942 noir movie that introduced Alan Ladd to film audiences is fascinating.  It's a better than usual noir, from a book by Grahame Greene, which means it's got a complex plot.  "This Gun for Hire" is more than a crime drama, it is a spy case, with bad guys who are not just screwing over each other, but the U.S. of A.  Veronica Lake and Robert Preston are the ostensible stars, but it is Lake's and Ladd's movie, with him playing a stone cold killer who turns out to be something more, and her playing a songstress/magician who soothes the savage beast.  both her musical numbers are terrific.  Lake and Ladd are so beautiful it's no problem watching them, and they layer their performances nicely. One of the bad guys, Willard Gates, played by Laird Cregar is wonderful, as a crook with delicate sensitivities. 

Ellen Graham (Lake) has just gotten engaged to her cop boyfriend Michael Crane (Preston) when she is enlisted by a Senator to spy on Gates, so she accepts a job in L.A. at his nightclub.  Gates has already hired Phillip Raven (Ladd) to kill someone he says is blackmailing his boss.  But after the hit he double crosses Raven, who ends up on the same train with Graham and Gates.  The action is fast and furious, with lots of twists and turns.  The patriotic tones stem from World War II and the poison gas threat adds to the danger.  Graham can't tell her boyfriend what she's doing, and he tries to save her with none of the relevant information, with the bad guys playing him and only his instincts to go on.  The psychological bent to this film, like Hitchcock's "Spellbound" makes the characters more interesting and fun.

What's not to like with two gorgeous leads, powerful photography in black and white, and a plot with some meat on it?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I lent a DVD to my son last night, one I find funny, and we'll see if he agrees.  "Must Love Dogs" is one of those guilty pleasures, a sendup of online dating and the anxious world of finding love.  It stars Diane Lane as a divorced woman who is a preschool teacher, so she never is around possible dates, and her large family decides it's time for her to get back in the game.  Lane is very natural and funny here, though I'm not normally a fan.  Her two sisters and brother keep trying to set her up and putting her profile on dating sites.  Her father, played by Christopher Plummer, is a widower also looking for companionship, and one of his dates is Stockard Channing, here with a rare plum role (little pun intended).  Lane and John Cusack meet cute in a dog park with borrowed dogs, and then misunderstand each other.  Lane desperately goes on a bunch of dates from hell that are hilarious, and Cusack tries dating a bimbo.  They are miserable.  Lane beccomes attracted to a "separated" father played by Dermot Mulroney, the ultimate cad. 

This film is worth watching for one scene alone:  Lane meeting her date at a cafe and looking for a man with a yellow rose.  As she nears, she discovers it is her own father, and when she tries to laugh it off and sit down to eat, he shoos her away as he has another date soon.  Trust me, it's very funny.

Cusack and Lane have believable chemistry, even if Cusack's character seems to have no source of income and a loft that is ultra expensive.  Welcome to movie world.  He builds beautiful wooden boats nobody buys.  At least Lane's house you can figure was given her during the divorce, because as a preschool teacher she could hardly pay for a cardboard hut in an alley.  Maybe she owns the preschool.  It's a mystery.  These two are obviously made for each other, because they live in a place where money is not necessary.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

In the realm of film, the 1988 movie "Without a Clue" would not be on anyone's best film list, and did not create a sensation when it came out or after.  But it's reliable and silly and funny, and especially now, when the world is gaga over "Sherlock" with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Feldman, myself included, sanity needs nudging a bit.  Let's not take the whole phenomenon too seriously.  My husband adores "Without a Clue", and when I want to get on his good side I magnanimously offer to watch it with him, as I did last night.  Roger Ebert didn't like it much, but maybe he needed to laugh more. 

First of all, two absolute masters of the acting world let loose, and each is hilarious and obviously having a lot of fun.  Michael Caine, playing Reginald Kincaid impersonating Sherlock Holmes, is an example of a great comedian.  I burst out laughing a lot watching him be a idiot.  Ben Kingley, as Watson and the REAL mastermind of the detective work, is terrific as the humorless doctor, frustrated at every turn by his own creation.  Their teamwork is sublime.  The plot is interesting and plausible for fans of Sherlock, Jeffrey Jones is great as Inspector Lestrade, and the whole cast delightful.  There is also a modern kick to the idea of fame bearing no resemblance to talent.  Reginald is made to be before the newshounds and Watson, sadly, is not.  It's a Kennedy/Nixon kind of media issue.

The scenery and sets are terrific, and the whole movie goes by like a summer breeze.  No dark psychological hints here.  It's fun, pure and simple.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

The other night we watched "Cimarron", the 1931 version.  As a kid I had to read several Edna Ferber books for school, and I remember this one and also "So Big".  She was quite the popular writer in midtwentieth century, though no one much reads her now, and I think she'd be catalogued more in the Young Adult section.  Both my husband and I love things about this old version, directed by Wesley Ruggles and staring Richard Dix as Yancey Cravat and Irene Dunne as his wife Sabra.  Estelle Taylor is the fallen woman, Dixie Lee, and Sol Levy plays the tinker turned apprentice in Yancey's newspaper office.  Edna May Oliver provides comedy as a prissy lady who befriends Sabra, and Eugene Jackson plays the black boy who worships Yancey and follows them from Kansas to Oklahoma.

This film is epic, covering about fifty years from the land rush and settling of Osage territory in Oklahoma through the build up and ultimate city that evolves, and how the town and people change in response.  Richard Dix is a hambone in the silent acting way, all over the place and over the top, but the other actors are pitch perfect.  Irene Dunne is a revelation as Sabra, who slowly realizes her husband will never grow up, and always be absent on adventures, so she takes over the publishing and by the end of the film is in Congress from her state.  Dunne was nominated for an Oscar for this role, where she must grow up and grow old and learn things the hard way.  So there is a lovely feminist message quite refreshing for the time, though in the nineteen thirties women were empowered by the vote and taking up reins in many fields.  There is also a note criticizing anti-semitism, with the character Levy plays and Yancey's championing of him against bullies.  And racism is confronted as well, both by the loving heroic Isaiah, and by the son of Yancey and Sabra, Cimarron, who falls in love with his childhood Indian friend and marries her when he grows up.  She is the daughter of a great Osage chief, and their children make the symbolic assimilation possible. 

But it is the awe inspiring scenes with hundreds of actors, racing to grab land in the rush, and the gradual transformation of the town are magnificent and stick in my mind.   No animated tricks here:  legions of horses, riders, wagons, buggies and other means of transportation were required to shoot these scenes.  I said to my husband that it's certain people and animals died making this epic.  The scenes feel real in a way that modern technology cannot match.  Imagine Gary Cooper as Yancey or Cary Grant, and the movie would really be amazing.  As it is, it's well worth watching.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

There is a charming film from a few years back, with Janet McTeer and Adian Quinn, "Songcatcher", that is a bit of a history lesson, a romance and a musical all at the same time.  Set in the early 1900s, McTeer plays Dr. Lily Penierie, a musicologist at a college who gets fed up with the glass ceiling and decamps to Appaliachia to record the ancient Scots-Irish ballads that the mountain folk have sung for generations.  She lives with her sister and her friend, who run a school for the children around, and stirs up antipathy initially, but gradually gains the trust of the locals.  She also falls in love with Tom, played by Quinn, who questions her motives:  is she exploiting his neigbors like everybody else?  She discovers her sister and her friend are lovers, and encounters the prejudice in herself and later in the local people.  Her great adventures make a lively movie, and it's worth the price of admission to hear the singing.  Emmy Rossum pops up as a young girl taken in by Lily's sister with the voice of an angel.  Taj Mahal even has a small part as a blind musician.  The scenery feels authentic, and the sense of place is important to Lily, as she is becoming atune to her own true nature. 

Maggie Greenwald wrote and directed this film, and it's always fun to see what a woman does with a story.  This one is unabashedly feminist, but then I don't mind that one little bit!

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Faye Dunaway is not my cup of tea.  She's too brittle and mannered an actress for me, and often too much a fashion plate instead of a warm human being.  But those qualities work for her pretty well in "Three Days of the Condor", a 1975 film directed by Sydney Pollack.  An adaptation of a best seller, this fast paced thriller has romance, danger and political relevance, today as well as at the time of it's making.  Robert Redford is a CIA agent who is basically a researcher a la Jack Ryan in the Clancy movies.  Like "Pelican Brief", some obscure research he's been looking into disturbs someone pretty important, and when he comes back to work from lunch, the whole office has been murdered.  He runs for his life, while trying to reach someone who can help him, but those people become the enemy as well.  He carjacks Faye Dunaway's car and forces her to let him hide in her basement flat.   She plays a lonely photographer who is lost and wanting to be swept up and he's just the man to do it.  With character actors like Cliff Robertson, Max Von Sydow and John Houseman, the dialogue is crisp and realistic.  Redford is at his gorgeous best, and his chemstry works with Dunaway.  This movie is like layers of onion peeled in shocking fashion.  At the end, you feel stunned, and the significance of this movie explodes.  It's a fun ride.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

One of my favorite movies is written and directed by Tim Robbins.  "Cradle Will Rock" is a fascinating look at the WPA in New York in the 1930s, during the Depression, when writers and directors and other artists were paid to create and develop.  This film features a play written about unionizing and the rights of workers, and Orson Welles and John Houseman figure in it.  The story is intrinsically riveting, an easy dose of history that is little known these days.

Starring John Turturro as a down and out worker, Emily Watson as a girl on the streets, Ruben Blades as Diego Rivera, John Cusack as Nelson Rockefeller, Joan Cusack as a girl with a crush on an Edgar Bergen ventriolquist played by Bill Murray, and with ahost of other familiar faces such as Susan Sarandon, Cherry Jones, Vanessa Redgrave, Jack Black, Paul Giamatti, and Hank Azaria.

Turturro and Watson are heartbreaking and  passionate, and Angus Macfadyen as Orson Welles and Cary Elwes as John Houseman steal the show.  There is humor, drama, love, tragedy and the whole human spectacle on display.

It is touching to see a time when the arts were supported, admired, considered essential to who we are as a nation.  I'd like to see high school students watching this in history class.  It's the best argument I've seen presented on the importance of creativity and the opportunity for expressing oneself.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

The 1988 movie "Arlington Road" is a scary movie in the best sense:  it makes you think.  Starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, and featuring Joan Cusack and Hope Davis, that makes four amazing actors in one film.  This film was shot before Robbins' best supporting Oscar and Bridges best actor Oscar.  They are in a "little" movie that should have gotten a lot more attention, but the subject matter was too dicey to play widely. 

Bridges is a college Professor Michael Faraday who is struggling with his grief over the death of his FBI agent wife killed by a right wing group.  He's trying to raise his boy alone, and when new neighbors move in who are super friendly and embrace the son into their family, he is initially happy.  But something is fishy:  the couple Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Robbins and Cusack) , seem to get creepier and creepier.  Have Faraday's obsessions with cult groups from the murder of his wife tipped him over into paranoia and madness?  His girlfriend (Davis) tries to calm him down, until one day she sees something that makes her suspicious as well.  It's a roller coaster of revelations that spirals at warp speed into tragedy.  I can't tell you more.  But the stranger down the street motif is the stuff of real life headlines, and our fear is not in question after the Boston marathon bombing and other similar plots.  Who is nice and friendly?  What does that tell us about the people around us?  Nothing. 

It's a fun dip into our own paranoia and conspiracy theories.  But after the film is over, you sit there thinking of how little we know others or ourselves, in a world turned upside down.  This film is way before 9/11, but it's worth watching as a mediation on our states of mind after.  Now we are constantly asked to report suspicious characters at airports, inform on others, and prepare for the worst.  What has our post 9/11 world done to us inside?

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I'm fond of the 1946 movie directed by Orson Welles, starring Welles, Loretta Young and Edward G.  Robinson.  It's gorgeous to look at, with those closeups that black and white does so well.  Robinson is a Nazi hunter looking for Nazi's who slipped through the nets and disappeared in the U.S.  Clues lead him to the perfect college town of Hartford, Connecticut.  As in Hitchock's "Shadow of a Doubt", there is evil lurking behind the charming houses and lovely lawns.  He suspects Charles Rankin, a professor and tinker with clocks, who is repairing the clock tower in the square.  The Nazi Kindler was known to be fascinated with antique clocks, but Robinson really has no proof until someone turns up dead in the woods by the college.  By this time Rankin has married Young, and though she senses something, she refuses to believe her new bridegroom is anything other than what he seems. 

The cast is great, and the movie filled with small quiet moments that are just slightly off.  It's creepy and fun at the same time.  Welles makes a fine villain, and the danger to the wife, her brother, her father, and even her dog pulls us along a tense line of anxiety.  I think of all that talent lost in whatever anxieties Orson Welles fought with over his short career.  He ended up hidden beneath layers of fat, like Marlon Brando.  His few jewels still shine, but what might he have directed and acted in haunts us like the early death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Poor M. Knight Smalayan.  He went from "The Sixth Sense" adulation to god knows what.  I haven't even seen any of his films since that awful one where everyone's committing suicide because of the trees.  Two of my favorite actors, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel were in it, and I felt embarassed for them.  My husband loves "Lady in the Water", and we own "The Village", though it's a one trick pony, but the only two we can agree on are "Sixth" and "Signs".  I like "Unbreakable", but then Samuel L. Jackson is fascinating to me, but not enough for my husband to watch it.  But I'll always have a place in my heart for "Signs".

First off, the actors are perfect:  Mel Gibson as the pastor and widower, Joaquin Phoenix as his younger brother who was a baseball player, Abigail Breslin as the tiny daughter, David Caulkin as the son and Cherry Jones as the sheriff.  Thinking of what's happened to Gibson is sad, but that role was his apex, and he really could act.  People forget that.  Set in Amish country outside Philadelphia, a family struggling with grief and fear and loss is confronted by an alien invasion.  The corn field is made into a pattern overnight, and there are strange sounds and the dogs bark like something's up.  How this broken family copes and redeems itself in the process is the beautiful plot.  It's scary and hilarious at the same time.  I love seeing Phoenix do comedy like this, and wish he would more often.  He needs to be in a Wes Anderson movie.  The tension and the fondness you feel for these characters is powerful.

There are scenes I will never forget:  Phoenix, Breslin and Caulkin with aluminum foil cones on their heads to keep the aliens from reading their thoughts, the tender care the dad takes with the son when he has an asthma attack.  I love the scene when Jones has to tell Gibson his wife is dying.  Her compassion in the film engenders ours. 

This sci fi owes something to Steven Speilberg's "ET" and "Close Encounters", but it stands on its own firm feet as a film about how we handle adversity, and whether we tear each other apart or rise to the occasion.  It's a loving family film that ironically is not for kids.  Too scary.  He's addressing us parents directly, and on our side, unlike Speilberg, who shows parents as incompetent and blind.  Depending on your mood, you can slide one or the other into the DVD player.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

A hidden jewel in the DVD cabinet is "Powwow Highway", a Sundance winner from 1988,  one of my favorite films.  I'm Indian, so I may be biased, but in our redskinned hearts we love this movie, and Gary Farmer, who stars.  It's contemporary, honest and authentic.  Farmer is the guy in the cult film "Dead Man" by Jim Jarmeush, and his presence on screen is always powerful.  Farmer plays Philbert Bono, and A Martinez is Buddy Red Bow, two guys who couldn't be more unalike.  Bono believes in the old ways, and lives life as a quest.  Red Bow is a modern Indian, who is an activist and cynical about his own history and that of his people.  The two set off for New Mexico in Bono's "pony" to bail out Red Bow's sister, who is in jail.  Graham Greene, Wes Studi and Amanda Wyss bring their star power to the film. 

At 87 minutes, this movie is tight, action packed and emotionally moving, while being funny as well.  There is a learning curve here for Red Bow, that we get to witness, and a sense of what the benefits can be from not turning away from who you are and your history.  Farmer is the moral compass, and yet he's complex and real at the same time.  Red Bow lets go of some of his righteous anger, and gains compassion and a home.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Well, the Oscars are now gone with the wind.  I enjoyed the show.  I like Ellen Degeneres, and also, let's face it, no one after Bob Hope has really come up to his standard.  I like a woman host.  I like her gentle humor.  And really, I don't care about the host, it's all about the awards, the dresses, wait...about the dresses and then the awards.

I was pleased "12 Years a Slave" won best picture.  I felt sad for "Gravity", but it's difficult to compare the two.  One is filled with narrative and characters galore, the other is silent and rests on the shoulders of one actor.  The actoring wins were unsurprising.  Yet not disappointing.  Leto and Nipongo were perfect choices, although Jennifer Lawrence was a strong contender for supporting actress.  McConnahey was expected, and he did a great job, but I would have prefered Chitwel Edjofor.  Blanchett was amazing, but the movie was awful, and subtly misognistic.  Blanchett owes nothing to Allen; she pulled that character out of the fire by herself.  But I saw tears in Sandra Bullock's eyes, and she carried her film without melodrama and showiness.  I admit I wish she'd won.

I'm thrilled a Black director's picture won artistically it was amazing and daring, yet thrilled Cuaron won as director, because his message was sublime and timeless and he executed it flawlessly.

I feel Spike Jonze deserved original screenplay and Ridley adapted screenplay, and wasn't it great a Black screenwriter actually won?

So, no real complaints, other than who was not nominated, and that's an old story now.

As to fashion, though I am a person dressed in jeans and sweaters and clogs, well, like the rest of the world, we live our princess dreams through this show, so without any qualifications or knowledge I'm happy to pipe up.  I think Sandra Bullock had the best dress, and was elegant and regal.  I loved Jennifer Lawrence's red strapless as well.  Angelina Jolie was the overall beauty of the night, with only Cate Blanchett to rival her.  I do not like dresses slit to the waist in front, and black doesn't work so well on Oscar night.  There.  I've made my stand.  Meryl Streep was less hideous, but she represents what I imagine I would look like if I had the misfortune to be invited.  Julie Roberts can't really dress for this occasion either.  Luckily, it means nothing about their acting ability, except they can't act their way into elegance.  I liked pale pink this year, on Camila Elves and others.  I think the Good Witch costume of Ellen was perhaps the best pink.  Jared Leto was the prettiest of them all, in his white jacket tuxedo.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I'm an admirer of Peter Weir's films and have been since seeing "Picnic at Hanging Rock" decades ago.  "The Last Wave" is unique, and "Witness" and "Master and Commander" are watchable again and again.  But my all time favorite of his is "Fearless", starring Jeff Bridges.  For years I brooded about why it didn't get nominated for best picture, with only Rosie Perez was nominated as supporting actress.  I think Bridges should have won for this role, but he wasn't even nominated.  I finally received some satisfaction when he won for "Crazy Heart", though he should have for "True Grit", "The Contender" and "The Fabulous Baker Boys" or even "Starman".  Maybe he makes acting look too easy, or he can't shake the "Dude" from "The Big Lebowski".  It's always a mystery to me why the rest of the world doesn't agree with my taste, but there you have it.

"Fearless" is about a man who is in a horrific airplane accident, and survives unscathed and leads many others to safety.  If you are about to fly, don't watch this movie.  This crash is believable, capital B.  He is in a strange kind of shock afterwards.  His best friend and architect partner was sitting next to him, but Bridge's guy moved to comfort an unaccompanied boy as the plane descends rapidly.  That saves his life, and his guilt over surviving is also in the mix.  The boy becomes obcessed with Bridge's character, and causes his own son to be jealous.  His wife (Isabella Rosselini) is hurt and later angry because he won't talk about the experience.  He connects with a fellow passenger (Perez) who has lost her toddler son and is practically catatonic with grief.  They become best pals, and his sense of omnipotence comforts her.  There is a scene where he proves to her she could not have kept the child in her arms due to velocity and gravity.  It's one of the greatest scenes about how we are powerless to save those we love that I have ever watched.  Her spouse and his become jealous, but we see that they are in a different, parallel universe after such a trauma.  His partner's wife and his own pressure him to lie to the insurance people and he is coping with the fact that he saw him beheaded.  He cannot speak.  His shock and grief are beyond words. 

Now when I see this film I think of 9/11, but it was made long before.  The power of the film is that it seems to come from a place of deep, profound understanding of what tragedy, loss, grief and slow re-engagement with life look like.  Rafael Yglesias wrote the novel upon which the film is based, and his writing is excellent.  That helps.  But the director, cinematographer and actors bring the story alive.  Bridges is incandescent in his delusion, his heartbreak and courage.  Perez is his match.  She embodies the grieving mother so well that she incarnates the universal experience of losing your child.  Yet this film is not depressing.  It shows us the healing process that allows most of us to embrace life again, perhaps more fiercely, after losing a loved one.  A great film.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched an oldie but goodie last night:  "Roxanne", Steve Martin's retake on Cyrano de Bergerac.  Martin plays Charlie, a fire chief in Oregon with a huge nose.  Daryl Hannah plays a grad student in town for the summer and searching the stars for a comet she found.  Shelley Duvall is Charlie's best bud, who owns most of the town and runs a cafe.  Damon Wayans, Fred Willard and Michael C Pollard are some of the hilarious characters who are volunteer firefighters.  These firefighters make the Marx Brothers look solemn, even the Three Stodges.  There are plenty of laughs and it's a delightful film overall.  However, the gender divide rears it's ugly head every time we see it.

My husband thinks it's fine that Hannah can't act and Martin ends up with her in the end.  Why not?  Every man to his fantasy, and Hannah is gorgeous to look at.  He admits it's a stretch that she plays a astrophysicist, but it don't bother him nohow. 

I see that on Planet Earth Martin should end up with Duvall, who has humor, sensitivity and is rich and pretty damn cute.  They have more in common, and they are both going to stay in this small town, Nelson, until the day they die.  It's paradise.  I can't buy the dream, and even with great effort cannot imagine the life Hannah and Martin would lead.  Also, like all women, I identify with Duvall not Hannah.  I'm not six feet tall with blond hair, blue eyes, pouty lips and a bod that is a man's ideal.  I'm not Duvall either, but she seems real and authentic in her role.  Believable, I think its called.

Now the thing is this, they put Duvall's character in the movie for a reason, since it's not part of "Cyrano", any version of it, so why?  Because they know us gals are going to have Hannah leaving at the end of the summer and then Martin will wake up and discover the true Cinderella.  They are fobbing us off, while pleasing every man who has viewed this film.  It's a cheat.  What really happens is he gets to sleep with her a few times, then she leaves.  She's not going to give up her career for him, I mean, he isn't John Jr.  Get real.

So when we watch together, we are in our own separate little worlds, his an absurdist dream and mine, of course, honed with the pragmatic edge of the real world.  Yes, men are from Mars and women from Venus.  I rest my case.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I like message movies, from "China Syndrome" to "Missing" to "Lions for Lambs".  I'm a big fan of Michael Moore, and I am on the lookout for educating myself the easy way, being quite lazy.  Of course, I don't usually buy these movies, because once is enough, though I own the three movies above plus a couple of Moore's.  But a several years ago I picked up a movie I hadn't heard of, "Red Dust", solely because Edjofor Chitewel and Hilary Swank were in it.  I was very pleasantly surprised.  Swank plays a South African woman who left as a teenager for New York and has never been back until now, when as a lawyer she has been asked to participate in the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  She was poor white trash as a child and was imprisoned overnight as a teenager for being caught dating a Black.  Her bitterness is deep and wide, and she hates the emotions coming back by returning.  Though she doesn't state it, you can see she is hoping to bring justice to her boyfriend who was killed in jail and some closure to herself as well.  Chitewel plays a political prisoner, who after his torture and release (and the death of his best friend before his eyes while they are in jail) has also left the country but returns to help his friend's parents find the body of their son.  His return brings flashbacks, and he has no faith in the Commission or justice at all.

The film is honest, and the ending has some closure but is disturbing as well.  Watching, I felt ambivalence about the Commission, as it grants pardon to those who confess, and thus they never face prison.  And yet, the process is clearly healing to many, and at least gets some of the atrocities into the light of day.  Swank and Chitewel are terrific, as is the rest of the cast, and the sense of place evoked is powerful.  Whatever you think at the end, you understand the purpose and function of the Commission much better, and the people there come alive and are unforgettable.  It's quite a lovely film.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My husband and I have been disagreeing about "Zero Dark Thirty" for a year now.  He thinks its a great film and Jessica Chastain should have won for her role as Maya.  I believe the film is excellent technically, but not great, and Chastain should have won for "Tree of Life" but not this role.  I was curious as to what we'd both think seeing it again.  The acting is flawless, but I'm a fan of Jennifer Lawrence, so I don't  begrudge her the Oscar last year.  I do love Chastain's mobile, expressive face.  And she is a great beauty, unlike Lawrence.  The other cast members are terrific, and it gave me quite a pang to see James Gandofini in it.  Mark Strong is a stand out and Chris Pratt and others very distinctive, despite uniforms and dark lighting.

I admire Kathryn Bigelow as a director, and in both this film and "The Hurt Locker" she handles volatile material by focusing on the effect of huge issues on one lone individual.  That's a good plan.  It worked perfectly in "Hurt Locker", and you come out thinking of what combat does to alter the psyche of a the soldier, and make him unfit for civilian life.  He/She is thrown back into regular life, but traumatized and unsupported.  It was a very compassionate film.

But "Zero" is more complicated.  It caters to our anger and revenge impulses, and focuses on the suffering of a CIA operative, instead of on the people epicted who are tortured, or the soldiers who carry out the CIA's commands.  My guess is Bigelow had a better film before Bin Laden was killed, and since much of the film had already been shot, she had a hybrid on her hands and lost control of whatever she originally wanted to say.  So the movie is a "Rocky" story now, about how a female bested the guys and her tenacity led to the kill.  It is Maya's singlemindedness that gets her the guy, and it is also her tragedy.  You can tell she thinks she has paid tribute to all the people in the towers, but you don't necessarily see it her way.  Or the government's way.  Is the tragedy that she has been led astray by patriotism?  And what did the kill accomplish?  It was simple eye for an eye Biblical stuff.

Some of us can't get on this ride and go all the way to the end.  We can see the downside to killing what you know and then facing what you don't know.  The terrorists have learned from this kill, not just us.  And then the torture.  The film definitely shows torture as being beneficial, though most experts in real life do not agree.  It becomes an advocate for black ops and hidden torture sites and unbelievable cruelty, which makes it hard to distinguish us from them.  So the film loses some of its intelligence, and makes basic human rights expendible in the face of OUR suffering. 

What Bigelow wanted to say doesn't matter.  The images are too strong.  And like a "Silence of the Lambs" you don't want this film in anyone's consciousness, because it's likely to fester and breed only cruelty.  So for me, "Zero" is a brilliant failure.  And I hope Chastain gets another chance at a nomination.  She's a keeper.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I agree with the movie historian David Thompson that the greatest film actor of the twentieth century was Cary Grant.  There are so many of his early movies that I love, and he had a long shelf life.  One of my favorites is "Talk of the Town" (1942) starring Grant, Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman.  It was directed by George Stevens, and is unlike anything else he did.  It is also an unusual role for Grant, as he plays a anarchist on the lam from a factory sabotage.  Arthur is the daughter of a woman who is renting a house to a famous judge, who wants some quiet time away to work on a book.  Before he comes, Arthur finds Grant hiding in the house, and insists he leave.  It is a small town, and she has known him from school and is soft hearted when he says he's being framed.  She agrees to hide him, and Coleman shows up early and she introduces Grant to him as the gardener.  Grant and Arthur have a lot of chemistry, and we need to trust Arthur's instincts in order to believe Grant.  He becomes a member of a strange triangle.  Arthur has been hired as the judge's secretary, and Grant keeps threatening to reveal himself, while having intellectual discussions with Coleman.  Turns out there is a conspiracy going on, and the action is tense about whether Grant will be caught and hanged, or whether evidence and the chain of events can be pieced together.  Arthur turns detective, and in the meantime Coleman falls in love with her.  When he is summoned as the candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, he wants to take her with him as his wife and partner.  She sees the opportunity, is torn, and ultimately enlists Coleman's help in finding the real culprits. 

It's fun, yet serious, about the application of the letter of the law, and both men soften from their opposite stances and move toward a middle road.  Grant regains his faith in the system and Coleman loses some of his naivete, and becomes a better judge in the process.  The ending is perfect, but I'll leave it to you to decide for yourself.

This film is both radical and patriotic, as many of the second World War films were, but this one transcends time and is as relevant today as back then.  Like Frank Capra's films, it wants to make the moviegoer think and reflect, but not too much.  The action and romance and comedy make us breeze along, until, after the movie is over, we wonder about the corruption and power of wealthy interests.  Have we really progressed?  I'm afraid not.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We are not actually able to watch DVDs right now, as one of our dogs has a cone on after surgery to his foot, and he can't go up the stairs and we are exhausted and can't find any dog free time.  But if I could - I might rewatch Mike Leigh's "Happy Go Lucky" from 2008.  It was a Golden Globe winner for best comedy picture and Sally Hawkins was up for best actress for that and the Oscar.  This is a comedy with lots of meat on it, and it has a message that you don't really see in films.  Hawkins is terrific as an eternal optimist who is not blinded by rose colored glasses; she sees the world and the people in it as they are, but is determined to look on the bright side regardless.  It is a conscious choice she makes.  You witness her sadness at situations, but she doesn't get numbed, she gets active, attempting to tease them out of their sorrow or problem solve.  She is an elementary school teacher, and this film is one of the best depictions of teaching and the heart of what is important I've ever seen.  The supporting cast is excellent, especially Eddie Marsden as the driving instructor from hell, her friend played by Alexis Zegerman, and Karina Fernandez as a loony Flaminco instructor.  It has a lovely romance, and the way she meets the guy is that he is a school psychological counselor whom she enlists to help a struggling student.  The scenes with the boy are tender and insightful. 

This film could be used to point out that life may not be a bowl of cherries, but if you eat what is in the bowl, you will feel more alive, more compassionate, and encounter an amazing assortment of characters.  Hawkins' character is grounded in her friendships, and confident enough to trust her instincts when it really matters.  Her learning about boundary setting is an important lesson for all of us and her compassion ultimately brings her many rewards.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

A friend of mine who likes movies as much as I do has been weeding out her collection of DVDs, and in the process discovering she has two of some.  So she gave me a copy of "Frost/Nixon" directed by Ron Howard and made in 2009.  It was nominated for best picture, and I can see why.  The cast is amazing, and Frank Langella especially is a miracle onscreen.  It's a pity he didn't win best actor, as he brings so much layered nuancing to Nixon.  Michael Sheen is great as Frost, and the supporting cast is knockout, with Kevin Bacon playing Nixon's advisor, anxious and loyal, Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell as advisors to Frost, Matthew MacFadden as Frost's producer and Rebecca Hall as his girlfriend.  It's so fast paced that I didn't realize it was a two hour film, and gripping as we wait to see if Nixon bests Frost or vice versa.  As a meditation on the media and politics it's educational, and as a forerunner of the direction of the American Presidency has gone since, with more and more decisions being forged by the President and his cabinet, without the knowledge of Congress, it serves as a warning.  But really, the genius is in seeing the parallels in both personalities, as well as the contrast.  The viewer watches the flaws and vulnerabilities, the vanities and prejudices, the initial lack of understanding about what was at stake and the deep need of both men for validation, which is elusive and perhaps a wound in their psyches.  I have to say that Oliver Platt is funny and so believable as a journalist who feels his reputation is at risk as well, and Sam Rockwell delightful as a guy bent on destroying Nixon who is also in awe of him and who ends up feeling sympathetic and being surprised by it. The film has a lot of humor and in no way feels like a history lesson.  It is a balanced film:  everybody has made mistakes, and nobody is seeing the whole picture, except maybe Kevin Bacon's character, who tries to head off disaster for a man he loves and admires.  His sadness is touching.  He knows too much.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

There are so many Jane Austen films I'm pretty burnt out.  Most people like the Colin Firth, Jennifer Elye BBC marathon, and I adore it myself, but it's hardly fair, since the luxurious length gives us so much more of the book.  "Pride and Prejudice" is my favorite of Austen's novels, but my prize for best adaptation goes to "Persuasion" with Ciaran Hinds as Captain Wentworth and Amanda Root as Anne Eliot.  It is true to the tone and story, and is artistically perfect, with a cast that is utterly delightful, including Sofie Thompson as Anne's hypocondrical sister, Mary, and Corin Redgrave as her obnoxious dad and a lot of the greatest British character actors on hand to keep the satire fresh and meaningful, especially the delightful Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Croft, the exception of a happy wife, and the ultimate example for Anne.

The metaphor of the sea works beautifully to represent the rocky nature of courtship and marriage.  Anne's sisters are fellow victims.  Anne's heartbreak was young and advised by her godmother, but her older sister is a spinster, and her younger, Mary,  in a mismatched marriage.  By implication, Anne's parents' marriage has been a horrible mismatch, and true love seems nowhere to be found.  Along comes her young love back from the sea and now a success, and Anne's suffering includes watching everyone assume he will marry one of Mary's sister-in-laws, either Louisa or Henrietta.  Complications, confusions and breathless understanding at last make this a happy ending, but dark in so many ways.  The satire is brilliant, but what it shows us is a society of snobs, hypocrites and syncopants.  Anne is lucky, but we know in our hearts that life does not immitate fiction.

The scenes set at the seaside in Lyme and at Bath bring the seventeenth century alive.  The final view on Captain Wentworth's vessel smoothly takes us from suffocating home and hearth to the expanse and adventures of sailing the world. Women desire adventures and change of scene, and lucky Anne will have them, unlike her dear creator.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

A few years ago, by accident, thumbing through the bargain DVDs at a store, I found a 1992 film of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes.  It is worth watching alone for the young beauty of the stars.  They are gorgeous, passionate and the chemistry is terrific.  The story is faithful to the novel, and the supporting actors are all well cast.  At 106 minutes, the movie is a ride on the moor in another century, and after, you miss the world you've entered, though it is strange and mysterious.  The tone of Bronte's masterpiece is that well captured.  When you see the story on screen like this, you realize the eroticism of the characters more strongly, and also, with modern attention, the abuse that drives these people crazy.  Cathy's and Heathcliff's isolation and manipulation as children has consequences, and we see the pattern of manipulation repeated before it is finally broken in the end.  Binoche plays both Cathy Earnshaw and Catherine Linton beautifully.  Empathy for these people is garnered by careful revelation of their underlying sensitivities.  The feelings in this film are timeless and universal, and the look of the Yorkshire area and the costumes are powerful additions to a tale of young people left to grow wild and untended, who find their own garden in the wilderness but are forbidden to have the solace they desperately seek.  Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon were great in the 1930s film, but this version is more immediate and nuanced.  It would be fun to watch them one after the other and compare.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

There is something about Burt Lancaster that is bigger than life:  those teeth, those turquoise blue eyes, his physique, his expansive enthusiasm.  His great film is "Elmer Gantry", but my favorite is "Unforgiven", not to be confused with Clint Eastwood's later film of the same name.  "Unforgiven" (1959) is based on a bunch of incidents in the west at the time of whites' encroachment on Indian territories, and the kidnapings of white children by Commanches and other tribes.  In this movie, there have been skirmishes between Kiowas and whites, and an uneasy coexistence is present.  At a time when there was still enough room for all, if each would stay out of the others way, the tensions on each side erupted over petty incidents.  The story focuses on two families, one headed by Lancaster, with his mother (Lilian Gish) two other brothers (one the World War II famous soldier Audie Murphy) and their sister, Rachel (Audrey Hepburn).  The other is headed by the Dad (Charles Bickford), two sons and a daughter.  They have just come back from a cattle drive, and are about to head out again to sell the joint herd. 

A strange man in civil war garb appears and haunts them all with prophetic warnings.   Rumors begin floating around that Rachel is Indian.  A Kiowa brave shows up and wants his sister back.  Lancaster is protective of her, and jealous of her as well, and he portrays that conflict well.  They have always known she is not their blood sister, but think she is the daughter of white settlers killed by Kiowas.  When Rachel becomes engaged to the son of Bickford, everything quickly spirals out of control.  Murphy hates Indians because their Dad was killed by them.  His racism is mirrored in Bickford's family as well.  This agony of not belonging anywhere becomes universal with the sensitive acting of Hepburn.  She is amazing here.  The chemistry between her and Lancaster is fiery. 

Directed by John Huston, the film is edited beautifully, and the beginning scenes of people of these times rings true.  They talk, sound and act like people of the 1800s.  You see their hardscrabble lives and the dignity in how they create community and strengthen each other.  The movie is a history lesson, and a thought provoking one at that, as well as a story about love of all kinds, gone bad, held good, and what family is.  The acting is great all through, but Lilian Gish is amazing as the mother who is the only one who knows the secret still alive, and how complex and hard her life has been, with choices she never expected to make.  The cinematography of the land is authentic, not prettied up, and the viewer feels something of what it must have been like to live out west, brave and terrified, wrong and right, on land that is only theirs because nobody else wants it.  Nobody white that is.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night my husband and I watched the Leonard Cohen documentary, which we'd had for a while but I couldn't convince my husband to view.  And he's the one who has always adored Cohen!  I didn't know the guy existed until I met my husband.  But I'm a convert, and the documentary is beautifully crafted and interesting visually, story wise and musically, with clips from two concerts, the first in New York with a bunch of amazing artists singing his songs and the second in Sydney, Australia, with U2.  Cohen's art shows up prominently as well, and the focus stays professional, not personal, which lifts it above any purient interest.  Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright stand out in a group of singers that are stellar, as does Nick Cave.  Both Rufus and Cave also articulate what his music means to them.  Bono and Edge are surprisingly insightful about Cohen and his poetry and song, and I admire them even more than before. 

Cohen is a beat poet, and Canadian, both of which I'd forgotten, and being made aware of these two core points about who Cohen is and how he got that way really aids the uncovering of his process.  He was a poet first, and the beats are who were his friends.  He's also not American, and his description of the difference between Montreal and New York is telling.  He felt more camraderie and support in Canada, and NYC was a churn of ambition and wish for stardom.  He has balanced those two worlds really well, overall, although his retreat to become a Zen monk on Mt. Baldy in L.A. perhaps shows a cost.  Hearing the origin of the song "Suzanne" alone is worth the viewing of this film.  Whatever he absorbed from his Zen teacher has given him the face in old age of a saint.  He's beautiful now, even if he has felt not attractive, as he says.  The revelation that he wears suits because his dad was in the garment industry and he just feels more comfortable in them is touching.  You sense a kind of honoring of his paternity in his spiffy duds. 

I like the way this film gives Cohen the privacy of his life, and does not trot out his daughter or others, yet the childhood photos are touching.  His dad died when he was eight.  The younger photos are of a happy child, the older of a pensive, sensitive person.  His journey has been illuminating for so many of us, and the beauty of the words and music he has given us a treasure that I for one, had taken for granted and sometimes forgot.  I won't anymore.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

One of my favorite comedies is directed by Diane Keaton, believe it or not.  And her exquisite photographic style is much in evidence.  "Unstrung Heroes" stars Andie MacDowell, Jon Turturro and Michael Edwards in a touching and funny story set in the 1950s about a disfunctional family seen through the eyes of the two children who must make sense of their weird uncles and bizarre father.  When the mother gets cancer and dies, their universe is shattered, as she is the anchor which has kept the family grounded.  Her uncles, hoarders and childlike, try to be there for the kids and the love in this family surmounts all obstacles.  Turturro is magnificent as the grieving father who has no fatherly instincts really, but loves his kids.  The uncles rise to the occasion and give the son the courage he needs to find his way to his new, altered life.  Richards and Maury Chaykin are delightful as the brothers who have social deficits but big hearts.  MacDowell is perfectly cast as the mother, tender and sad and struggling to hold these boy men in check.  You'll want to look closely at the sets, which are magnificent, and the pitch perfect costuming and period details.  I wish we'd seen more movies directed by Keaton, as this one shines many years later.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

One of my favorite comedies is "Happy, Texas", with Steve Zahn and Jeremy Northam.  I was reminded of it last night because we were watching "Dallas Buyers Club" in which Steve Zahn plays a cop.  "Happy" is about two small time criminals who escape their minimum security prison and end up carjacking an RV.  They soon realize the best place to hide is to impersonate the two guys who own the RV, but unfortunately, the victims are gay and make their living running kids talent pageants.  Of course, Zahn gets stuck with the little girls sewing costumes, teaching dance routines and falling in love with their dance teacher.  Northam falls in love with the woman banker of the bank he plans to rob.  William H. Macy is the sheriff, who has a secret crush on Northam, and there is a psycho who escaped with them who now comes back to share in the loot.  I laugh out loud so much in this tender, somehow believable movie, because all the actors have terrific timing and make their characters true to life.  Zahn makes the film work, and his kindness towards the little girls, his goofy dance steps, his sewing and bitching at Northam, who leaves all the pageant work to Zahn while he's romancing the banker and holding off the sheriff from declaring his love, is hilarious.  It all ends happily, with the guys getting their gals (as soon as they get through the rest of their prison sentences) and the dance team going on to compete a a higher level.  Everybody wins.

Paa the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I'm reading a memoir about how much the novel "Middlemarch" by George Eliot meant to her.  That reminded me I have a BBC version of the novel at around five hours.  I set it out to see again at some point, but it's daunting.  However, there are two of these classic BBC films of great novels that I adore enough to see piecemeal again and again.  "Our Mutual Friend" is amazing.  It's my favorite novel by Dickens and so profound and prophetic while being filled with romance, tragedy and bizarre characters that somehow become endearing and real to us.  The other is Dickens' also, "Little Dorritt".  Anchored by great actors set free by the vast amount of time to tell the story, both of these films are worth renting and doing a marathon.  I almost bet you will hang in there until three am if need be to see them through.  I actually first saw both in a movie theater, where you could see half the opus and the come back the next day for the rest.  It takes dedication, for sure, but I am devoted to Charles Dickens, who, to my mind is the greatest English novelist.  I am partial to his class consciousness, his ability to bring the poor folk into sharp and sympathetic focus, and his understanding of the human heart, both the dark and light parts.  He understands fathers and sons, fathers and daughters and the complexity of being in a situation that feels wrong for you, and yet you can see no way to get out of it.  "Our Mutual Friend" is about money, and how it corrupts and twists good people and bad.  The economic transformation that Dickens witnessed during the industrial revolution was a cause for alarm, and his understanding of the havoc it would wreck on the already poor, children, families and the environment predicted what we now live with daily.  "Little Dorritt" is about the cost of industry on the people who suffer to make it function smoothly, and with little obvious cost to the middle class, as they are able to ignore the suffering of their fellow citizens.  These stories are epic, and the viewer cannot see them without having a changed world view.  The BBC has honored Dickens and his passionate avocation of the rights of all men by creating such lovely, funny, delightful but truthful visions of the "modern" world.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "Mutiny on the Bounty", the 1935 version in black and white, starring Charles Laughton, Clark Gable and Franchot Tone.  It won the Oscar for best picture that year.  It's quite well done, and fun to watch.  There are lots of recognizable character actors and beautiful closeups on their faces.  The story is inherently gripping, and the life at sea well portrayed.  The ships, the sea, the islands and everything are first rate.  It was filmed partly in Tahiti, and part in Monterey, Santa Catalina, and various California locales, but the editing makes the scenes smooth.  Gable is very engaging as Fletcher Christian, and Laughton complex and msyterious as Bligh.  Tone is gorgeous as the man mediating between them both.  You never understand why Bligh takes such a dislike to Gable, except Gable is charismatic and so likeable, with dimples to boot.  But the differences in their looks help you fill in the blanks.  Interestingly, when Bligh is cast at sea in a small lifeboat his demeanor transforms and he's kind and encouraging and fair to the other men, making you wonder if he has had an epiphany or just is the ultimate pragmatist.  The islanders seem authentic and their lifestyle appealing, and you have no trouble seeing the allure of staying versus the harsh world of sailors at sea.  The woman Christian marries, Morita, in real life became the second wife of Marlon Brando, who played Christian in an unnecessary remake of the film in the sixties.  She was Mexican, and very beautiful. 

A little documentary of Pitcairn Island, where the mutineers lived and their descendants still live, is a great addition to the DVD, and it's strange to think that they escaped without punishment, though a ship was sent back to Tahiti, and captured the mutineers who didn't follow Christian.  So much energy and loss of life trying to find the mutineers, when in fact none died from the mutiny.  But the symbol they presented must have been deemed exceedingly dangerous.  The irony is that the Bounty's mission was to bring breadfruit plants to slaves held by the British in other colonies.  So much hoopla over a few plants. 

The movie is delightful, filled with humor, poignancy and passion.  Gable and Laughton are a match, as two men with tempers that cannot abide each other.  Compassion will always be more appealing than rules, and we easily side with the mutiny, as Americans and as anti-authoritarians.  And we like a rogue when we see him.  Gable was an superstar and the film shows us why.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"Outbreak" is a movie that is gripping and timely every time you see it, and I've watched it a bunch over the years.  It's focused on a Ebola type outbreak in a little town in California (it is filmed in Mendocino) and how the strain of virus got here from Africa.  All the science is fascinating, though simplified a bit, and the story and characters keep us engaged.  Dustin Hoffman heads a great cast with Rene Russo as his exwife who is leaving for the CDC in Atlanta, but gets caught up in this new, deadly mystery, Donald Sutherland as an army general who tries to keep Hoffman from finding out that he is responsible for not reporting the virus years ago, Morgan Freeman as Hoffman's immediate boss, who is conflicted, and Kevin Spacey as an army doctor and best friends with Hoffman.  Cuba Gooding plays a new army scientist who goes out on a limb to help Hoffman capture the carrier animal and develop an antidote.  There is a terrific mix of humor, high tension, villains, chase scenes and romance, plus two adorable dogs Hoffman and Russo fight over.  Everyone almost dies, but most are saved, and the good guys win.

The film has a theater scene of germs spreading as a person coughs that is classic; worth your time by itself.  There is another on an airplane, where Patrick Dempsey, who is the person who brings the animal into the country illegally, which will convince you to drive yourself instead of fly and not pick up any hitchhikers.  The scene of the little girl befriending the infected animal is pretty nail biting as well.  I'm always amazed that Hoffman and Russo work as a couple as well as they do.  Hoffman does adorable pretty darned well when he chooses to, and you feel they have a life and history worth saving.  At least for the sake of the dogs.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

A few years ago a goofy, scary movie was made a la "Jaws" called "Lake Placid".  If you are in the mood for a drive-in kind of film, this is a good bet.  The cast is excellent:  Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson, and Betty White.  There is a thirty foot crocodile in an isolate freshwater lake in Maine.  There are murky underwater scenes and scary music.  There are plenty of surprises and twists, a good backstory for Fonda, who is terrifically funny here, and even a romance that has some heat to it.  Oliver Platt is irresistably loopy and endearing, and his feud wwith Gleeson is hilarious.  The plot is just barely plausible, and the cast makes it so.  Cook up a big bowl of popcorn, break out the cans of cola, and relax.  This ride is as good as the roller coaster at the beach.

Whatever this kind of movie does:  plug into our fear of nature, give us a T Rex thrill, escape the horrors of news headlines, once in a while, I love to endulge.  Like "Jaws", the solution is simple: stay out of the water, but then the land isn't safe, or the boats, or even the helicopter.  As Fonda's character admits, it's fun, and she feels fully alive.  You can't make her leave.  She's just getting started and doesn't want to miss a thing.  The movie is worth seeing alone for Betty White's character.  What a kick!

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

I have a weakness for legal thriller novels and it extends to movies of that ilk.  One of my favorites is "The Pelican Brief" with Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts, both of them young and gorgeous.  John Grisham's novels are made for the screen to begin with, and I love "The Rainmaker", "The Firm", "The Client" and others.  Each has an important political point to make, and none of those points have dimmed with age.  There are still insurance companies denying their policies unfairly, law firms in bed with the mafia or drug cartels, and children being manhandled in court and single mothers struggling to protect their families from the agencies sworn to protect them.

In "Pelican", two Supreme Court Justices are assassinated, and a young Tulane law student (Roberts) comes up with a theory on why.  Her professor (Sam Shepherd), with whom she is sleeping (another political point), is killed after he passes the brief on to a friend in the FBI.  She realizes she was meant to die as well in the car explosion, and goes on the run.  She enlists the help of a famous Washington DC journalist, played by Washington, and together they struggle to stay alive while they get enough evidence to go public with the story.  But forces in the CIA, FBI and the White House are clashing and playing against each other as well. 

The whole cast is great, especially Robert Culp as the President, Tony Goldwyn as his chief of staff, John Heard as the FBI friend and Stanley Tucci as the assassin.  Set in New Orleans and NYC and DC, the plot is as relevant today environmentally as back then.  It could be today's headlines.  I'm not too fond of Roberts, but here she is perfectly cast and carries the film easily.  Washington is a surprising casting choice, but it works.  John Lithglow as his editor gives some lightness and humor to the movie.  Interestingly, in the book Darby Shaw and Gray Grantham sleep together, but I guess it was too loaded with a white student and a black journalist.  I wonder if they would include it these days?  The chemistry between them is strong. 

I admit to seeing this film many times, and I admire it more each time.  Like "All the President's Men" it is passionate, scary, and about real power and how it plays out.  And because "All the President's Men" is a true story, "Pelican"'s fiction is close enough to truth to wake us up and make us take notice.  The movie is a guilty pleasure with brains.